“I don’t see anything,” he said, and went over to the crack where the floor met the sloping roof. He ran the broom along it, looking for a hole or something. “You might want to put a few mouse traps out.”
“I’ll pick some up in town today,” she said, but her voice was tight.
He looked over at her, and he found her looking at the kayak, mist in her eyes.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Memories.” She shrugged, blinking it back.
Yeah, him, too.
“The kids used to love taking that thing out onto the lake,” she said. “I was always scared they’d drown. I mean, this is a deep lake. Remember Tanya Harrington who drowned in senior year?”
“Yeah.” It had been a blow to the community. Blue Lake was nothing to play with. It was strange watching someone else moved by old memories in this lake house. It seemed out of place, like only one person should be able to have that kind of experience here.
“I used to make the kids come back and put on life jackets,” she went on. “And they’d pretend to be all sulky about it, but I could tell they liked that I made them do it. They could roll their eyes and save face.”
“You were good for them,” Logan said. “I remember that stage with my own son. All the attitude.”
She met his gaze and smiled wanly. “When Adam came to see us here at the lake, the kids snuck out without their life jackets again. So Adam put the kayak up here and said they could find something else to do.”
That sounded like a solid parenting choice to him. He would have done the same.
“So...you two spent a lot of time here with the kids?” Logan asked.
“Adam worked a lot.” But there was something in her tone that had sharpened.
“Yeah?”
“No. That’s a lie. Or I think it is. I found out he was carrying on some affairs. So when he said he was working and I took the kids out here to the lake house, who knows what he was doing.”
Right. He sighed. “Sorry.”
“Whatever. That’s life.”
“It shouldn’t be.”
Melanie moved over to a stack of cardboard boxes in a far corner and pulled open the lid of the top box. She looked down into the contents, then moved it aside and opened the next one.
“What did you find?” he asked.
“Just old junk.” She pulled out a clock radio. “Whatever wasn’t good enough to keep at the house we ended up bringing out here. And this is what I’m left with—the cast-off crap.”
Logan chuckled. “You also have the most amazing view on the lake.”
“There’s that.” She smiled. “Sorry, this house means something to you, too. I keep forgetting that.”
“It’s okay.” Her grief seemed fresher, anyway.
“I guess I’m angrier than I thought. I thought the last year of separation would do more for me.”
“Hey, I’m pissed still, and it’s been five years since Caroline died. There’s no real timeline there.”
“Why are you mad?” she asked, looking up at him.
He’d said too much. He hadn’t meant to, but when she was opening up, it was hard not to answer in kind.
“It’s nothing,” he said.
“Your wife was faithful, wasn’t she?” Melanie asked.
“Oh, yeah. Definitely.” He nodded toward the next box down. It looked older than the others. “What’s in that one?”
Mostly, he was trying to distract her from his issues. He’d thought he was dealing with his grief pretty well, but then he’d found those diaries, and it set him back to day one in a lot of ways. It was hard to lay his wife’s memory to rest with a sense of betrayal lodged between them.
Melanie opened the next box and made a sound in the back of her throat. She reached inside, rummaged around.
“What is it?” he asked.
“It’s not ours.”
Ours. He noticed the language there. She meant her and Adam. Melanie pulled the box out between them, and Logan squatted down to look inside. If it didn’t belong to the Isaacses, then maybe it had belonged to his dad.
There were a couple of fishing trophies, a box of lures that looked pretty dusty. There was a framed picture of some guys in a fishing boat, and in the bottom of the box was a little cloth bag next to some mouse droppings and a chewed corner of the box.
“A mouse—” Logan said.
“You think that’s all it was?” Melanie asked.
“Might be. I’d put down those traps before I worried too much.”
He was still trying to deflect. He looked closer at the picture, scanning the faces. His dad was in the center, smiling easily and holding a fish. He wasn’t sure what he felt looking at his father’s features. He didn’t take after his dad—not like Junior did. Junior was Harry’s spitting image.
Logan pulled the little cloth bag out of the box, shaking off shreds of cardboard. It tinkled softly. He pried open the drawstring and poured out a little chain bracelet. It was decorated with gold frogs covered in green crystals. His heart sped up in his chest, and he licked his lips. He knew this design.
“That’s pretty,” Melanie murmured.
“It’s my mom’s,” he said.
Melanie looked at him, eyes widening.
“She wore a necklace with a frog on it just like these. I used to like it when I was a kid.”
He could remember sitting on her lap, fiddling with the little green frog pendant. She wore it less as he got older. It hadn’t been worth much, and maybe it went out of style, but she kept it in a box on her dresser, and he used to sort through it from time to time, looking at the chains and baubles that she didn’t wear anymore but he remembered from when he was little.
“So your dad kept a memento,”
